Steve Schmidt (McCain’s campaign strategist) has been trying to shift the focus from the campaign staff (for this hatchet job on Palin) trying to say that it is people outside the campaign who are manufacturing vicious rumors. Schmidt is a bald-faced liar doing a CYA job.
Read this article:(http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-07/mccain-campaign-autopsy/p/) where Schmidt admits an utter lack of control over McCain staffers:
(excerpt) However, with even just a few days’ distance, he saw no problem in confirming what, from the outside, seemed like an obvious frustration: Constant leaks, and not just about Sarah Palin. There were, he [Schmidt] said, “more than eight or nine people who would” talk to reporters. “We would read about [it] pretty quickly in Politico or one of the other blogs, with exact details and recounting of the discussions” that campaign leaders were having. “And it’s very difficult to run a political campaign at any level where that environment exists. And it was the first time in my career that I have ever worked in that environment.”
Schmidt knows that McCain staffers are responsible for distributing these outright lies to the media. Whether it’s to shift the blame from their role in leading McCain to defeat or because they are threatened by a conservative Palin candidacy in 2012, is anyone’s guess. Quite frankly, I think it’s both.
Note to “centrist” Steve Schmidt: Kiss your future in the GOP buh-bye...and good riddance.
If these “jerks” as Gov Palin has aptly termed them, used campaign cell phones during the campaign, the bills should show who talked to whom in the press, and when. It should be very easy to figure out.
***There were, he [Schmidt] said, “more than eight or nine people who would” talk to reporters. “We would read about [it] pretty quickly in Politico or one of the other blogs, with exact details and recounting of the discussions” that campaign leaders were having. “And it’s very difficult to run a political campaign at any level where that environment exists. And it was the first time in my career that I have ever worked in that environment.”***
Did he know who these 8 or 9 people were? How hard could it have been to fire them - starting with that woman who is friends with katie couric!